Richard Nugent has over 30 years experience in urban design and is currently on the AIA 2011 National Architecture Awards jury.
He is an associate director of Conybeare Morrison in Sydney and has worked in New York, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Washington and Boston.
Nugent talks to A&D about why infrastructure is the glue which holds cities together, his grand plans for Centre Point Tower in Sydney and teaching at Harvard University.
You are on the jury for the AIA National Architecture Awards. What do you look for in winning designs?
The features that make great architecture vary with the program or the design problem at hand that needs to be solved. Some projects are inherently more challenging than others in terms of complexity, budget and or site constraints.
Great architecture, though, transcends all these issues and provides an intangible something more, and a new way of seeing something.
You’ve been a director of the Harvard University Urban Design and Planning Section of the Career Discovery Program. What can you tell us about that experience in one of the world's most prestigious universities?
While the Career Discovery Program is a summer program intended to introduce non-designers to the design professions and comes with its own challenges, teaching at Harvard is very much like teaching at many other institutions.
The students are enthusiastic and bring a variety of experiences to bear on their projects. Having said that, one difference, perhaps, is the range of cultures represented in the student body at Harvard. In providing urban design critiques to the students one needs to reach more broadly when providing design references in order to be effective.
You’ve been involved with a lot of infrastructure projects. Do you think infrastructure design is dynamic and exciting today?
This is most certainly one of the more dynamic aspects of our profession and always has been. Ultimately, the architecture of a city is supported by its infrastructure.
A great example of this is the development of the present Grand Central Terminal in New York. This railway terminal is only a very small part of a massive infrastructure development that allowed the development of midtown New York to take shape.
The office towers of Park Avenue are supported, literally and functionally, by the railway facility and the commuters it provides to this part of the city. Southern Cross Station in Melbourne and Central Station in Sydney offer the same potential as catalysts.
In your experience as an architect in many different countries, what is one universal thing you have discovered about architecture or architects which rings true everywhere?
I think the thing that is most constant is the desire to make things better. I have worked with architects on projects around the world as diverse as universities, metro systems, super tall buildings and small public domain projects.
The intention to provide a ‘better place’ through the built form rings true over and over. It is encouraging to see this in the students I have taught as well. I think this is the primary driver. It is also why we probably spend so much time — perhaps too much time — on competitions and pro bono work.
What type of architecture inspires you?
I suppose I am a minimalist at heart. Seeing a piece of design, be it a building, piece of infrastructure or a piece of public domain that provides something exciting with minimal means will always get my respect.
If you could demolish one building in Australia, what would it be and why?
That is a difficult question. I would have to expand the definition of demolition to include a complete visual transformation so that the original is unrecognisable.
Then I would say that the Centre Point Tower in Sydney would be the candidate. It is remarkable that whilst so many cities take some of their identity from their tallest structures — think Melbourne with the Eureka Tower; Paris with the Eiffel Tower; New York with the Empire State Building — Sydney’s tallest structure is often relegated to the background or not really noted at all.
I would love to hold a competition to see how we could re-imagine this tower. With current glass and media technology the possibilities are limitless. I have heard descriptions of the Eureka Tower that include the way it transforms sunlight over Melbourne. [Buildings like that] provide for a shared public event on a metropolitan scale which is really what urbanism is all about.
What five words describes your approach to architecture?
Minimal, transformative, functional, authentic and incomplete. Every piece of architecture depends on its setting, its users and, ultimately, its unforseen evolution over time to be completed.
Sydney image via www.sydneyshowcase.com.au
